Justin's TGM J's Racing Integra Type R

[blueguy]

I've owned this car for quite a long time and it's come a long way over the years to the point where I've stopped modifying (for now ).

From the title, the Honda guys will know J's Racing. TGM is a race team in the UK that look after it. In it's current guise, it's very much still a road car but catered for track.

Anyway to start from the very beginning..

Many moons ago, I picked up a facelift DC5



It came with Mugen Assist meters



and sat on Mugen Sports suspension


They were ok but off they came.....


..and were replaced with Eibach Pro Street S coilovers which went very with the Toyo R1R tyres I had on the wheels at the time




A B&M short shifter went in


Bye bye OEM


Dixcel Slotted Discs, Carbon Z-Type pads and Hel brake lines replaced the standard Brembo items which gave shorter stopping distances, but also provided fade free braking (on track) and a more progressive feel.


I had the cam cover smoothed and painted champ white and changed the plug cover over for a carbon fibre one




DRE shift light prior to fitting


My car as it was then, taken at Brands Hatch circuit where it performed very well.

[blueguy]

I had collected a number of parts like a RBC inlet manifold, ported to a custom 70mm throttle body & Hondata Gasket



This was subsequently grounded down and polished for a bit of bling


I also had some other bits:

Function7 lower control arms


Buddy Club Spec Condenser


Some more bling...


And lastly, a set of Volk Racing CE28's in diamond black.

[blueguy]

The RBC was fitted along with a J's Racing Tsuchinoko intake






I was really surprised at how small the gap is between the TB and intake pipe. There's absolutely no way you could modify the typical SFS/Samco hose to fit.





Therefore a custom pipe was cut to size, however even to this day the fit is not perfect.


J's Racing 4-2 manifold and 2-1 decat.







J's Racing 60RS catback exhaust



A potential issue I was aware of was trying to make a Limited Edition Buddy Club P1 Racing strut I had fit. Having looked at the clearance room above the airbox cover, I had found it definitely wouldn't fit.



This was the strut in question - only 10 made by Buddyclub UK in commemoration of their UK time attack win the season before.

[blueguy]

After getting used to my Eibach coilovers on track, I started to find them lacking, particularly in tight twisty corners. Don't get me wrong, they are an awesome coilover but there's a reason why they're called pro "street". I made the decision to get something special - Nitron NTR Race Coilovers with Eibach Spring upgrade. These are a serious set of coilovers that I had thought long and hard about for some time; even before I found out that J's Racing had commissioned Nitron to build a set of dampers for one of their S2K race cars. Getting these would make my car harsh on the road but awesome on track, primarily due to the high spring rates and matching valving. There is definitely compromise involved as you can't have a comfortable road car with race suspension, it goes against physics!

The NTR Race model is a 3-way adjustable damper, capable of adjusting rebound, and high and low speed bump. To put into perspective how performance orientated these are, typical aftermarket coilovers are only 1-way adjustable as you know, only allowing you to adjust the Rebound, or rebound and bump together with one adjuster. Of the latter, you may be thinking how on Earth can you adjust two types of setting with a single adjuster when damping forces are not linear? Exactly! (will explain more on this below) However, in the real World it's not really an issue for the majority of applications. There is typically a large bias towards the rebound adjustment as it has the largest effect on damping out of the three.
I think of 2-way and 3-way dampers as the next level up in damper tuning, not 1-way as a bad application for adjusting damping, because they are not! I was just being facetious earlier, a lot of competition drivers/ some race teams use 1-way (for budget reasons though)

To give a greater understanding of how these 3 damping forces affect a car's handling, I'll give a quick overview of what rebound, high speed and low speed bump is (as explained by Nitron):

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When a damper is compressed this is known as the compression stroke or ‘bump’, when it is extended this is known as ‘rebound’. The amount of force that the damper generates during these movements is usually different in each direction and is often stated as a ratio, for example a 3 : 1 ratio means the rebound force is 3 times the bump force. However, things are never this simple. As the damper movement speeds up the force it generates increases, if the bump and rebound forces were totally linear it would be possible to plot an exact bump to rebound ratio. Generally, damping forces do not increase at a constant rate with an increase with speed, and so the bump to rebound ratio varies for different shaft speeds. 3 : 1 maybe the ratio at medium speeds, but at lower speeds this could be 1 : 1 for example.

Low shaft speeds can really be thought of as the chassis moving around, i.e. diving, rolling and squatting, and combinations of these. As a car is driven through a corner, the chassis will take a variety of different attitudes as it goes from straight to straight. These are all low speed shaft movements as far as the shocks are concerned.

High shaft speeds are where the wheels encounter something that rapidly disturbs their steady state, and the chassis will hopefully remain stable, i.e. a bump.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Typically, dampers are either monotube or twintube. Nitron dampers utilise a monotube design.

I won't go into the details of why monotube is better as I am far from being a suspension technician; Google both, there is lots of literature out there. I will however list out the advantages over twintube:

• Lighter

• Greater heat dissipation

• Greater sensitivity to small shaft movements

• More consistent damping and greater resistance to fade during long periods of use
• Can be inverted to reduce unsprung mass

Additionally, the Race versions have remote canisters that are hose mounted to the main shock.

All dampers require something to compress internally to allow the rod to enter the body, in the case of a gas monotube this is achieved using a floating piston and a compressible volume of nitrogen.

A damper with a remote reservoir on a hose onto the side of the shock allows the length of the main shock absorber to be reduced by moving the floating piston assembly to the side, and a much larger volume of nitrogen may be used which has a more consistent pressure during the rod stroke.

As the piston rod is pushed into the top of the body tube, an identical volume of oil is displaced into the remote reservoir. Placing valves in the head of the remote reservoir canister allows the damping rate to be varied in compression as oil is passed through it during the compression stroke. An additional benefit is the ability to cool the nitrogen by mounting the reservoir where there is cooling airflow and away from sources of heat, this will keep the nitrogen at a more constant pressure and help with consistent damping.

I'd have a steep learning curve to understand and apply in a practical sense the optimum settings for different tracks, but then that's half the fun ^_^

[blueguy]

I always knew I would upgrade from my Dixcel brake setup at some point. Minimum upgrade would be a 2 piece floating disc/bell design but keeping the OEM brembo calipers. If I were to go this route I would most probably go with the DBA 5000 discs possibly mated with Hawk HP Plus pads.

Don't get me wrong, the Dixcel slotted rotors and Z Type pads are an excellent combo and I would recommend them to anyone. BUT, given the direction my car was going, one piece discs with OEM calipers don't really match up to the rest of my mods for example - Nitron NTR Race dampers, CE28's, one piece brake discs and oem calipers.....

So with the above in mind, I had a discussion with TGM and it so happened they were thinking the same thing and so mentioned what they had in mind. It obviously wouldn't be as aggressive as the TGM race car. For example if you just take the calipers, they run full on Brembo race calipers which have no dust seals etc etc. Additionally they also run Hawk DTC-70 pads.

So what did they suggest?

• Brembo F50 Calipers

• 332x32 fully floating 2 piece race disc set up (FYI, DC5R OEM discs are 300mm)

• Our choice of pad compound to suit (most probably one of the Hawk Ferro-Carbon pad range)

It took 3 weeks for Brembo to make up the kit (anodizing etc usually takes the majority of this time). Anyway, these are exactly what the calipers would look like.





But the brake story doesn't end there.

I was at a motorsport charity day that TGM were attending, held at Snetterton Race Circuit.
I had jumped into one of their race cars which had Nitron NTR Race coilovers (same as mine) but Brembo race calipers with 2 piece race discs. OMG! Tom (the boss of TGM) was braking (as expected) very late and the brakes just stopped the car like it had hit a brick wall; to the point that I thought I was going to fly through the windscreen and this was with a full race harness. I was seriously impressed that I asked Tom to send back my as of yet unfitted F50 calipers (the disks are the same) and upgrade to this setup.

The following week Tom had spoken with Brembo to build a pair of XA2.E7 Series 4 race calipers in replacement for my new and unfitted F50 calipers.

The 2 piece race disc setup would remain the same. Incidentally, the discs are the same as the below picture



When I was later down at TGM, the F50's were still there so I was able to do a quick visual comparison.

F50 Caliper picture for reference


XA2.E7 Race Caliper


Notice the quick release retainer. Pad changes should only take seconds


Notice the F50 has dust seals around the piston holes. The XA2.E7 does not, plus the holes are much larger! Note: this photo is misleading due to the angle of the shot. The F50 is a much smaller caliper which you'll see in the next photo


Notice the size difference between the two calipers. And I thought the F50s were wide!


The XA2.E7's as with all race calipers run without dust seals around the pistons as in brutal race applications where there is prolonged serious heavy braking, they would melt. This will mean that I'll have to keep on top of them and clean them out on a regular basis. Given my car is a weekend car at most (and only driven hard on track) this is no big issue.

Anyway, some tech specs of the XA2.E7 below (check out the piston size and pad thickness - absolutely immense!)

• 2 piece aluminium caliper body

• 2.95kg

• Piston size: 38mm, 42mm

• Piston area: 50.39cm2

• Pad area: 63cm2

• Pad thickness: 25 - 26.5mm

Fitted


1 inch thick pads

[M@lew]

Great build, looking forward to updates!

Everything on your car is so clean.

[Shakeel]

Awesome build so far bud!

[nikolaz01]

Great parts selection and a genuine facelift type r to!

[Norm]

Hi Justin. Great to see your car here on ClubITR. Your car has however gone leaps and bounds since these photos. You should show us the whole build or perhaps a link to your blog.

[butter]

I'm curious to know why the blog was taken down! I was an avid follower of your build thread.

[Flippit]

ahh nice so you posted this on ClubITR like i recommended good stuff man! Them new brembos make the old brembos look like drum brakes sheesh!!

[blueguy]

Thanks for the kind comments.

Hi Justin. Great to see your car here on ClubITR. Your car has however gone leaps and bounds since these photos. You should show us the whole build or perhaps a link to your blog.

I'm curious to know why the blog was taken down! I was an avid follower of your build thread.

Oh wow, I didn't think I'd come across anyone that read my blog, as when I was actively writing on it I was only getting around a 1000 page views a month.

The reason I took it down was because a company who produces copies of JDM tuner parts used some of my photos for a J's part they had copied for an EP3. I was not best pleased because:
a) My photo was of a real J's part. Use my photos if you want, but not to blatently misrepresent a copy with a picture of a genuine part
b) Obviously it's not an EP3

The blog still exists although I changed the permissions to private last year. I might make it public again though as I have a few updates. I'll let you know.

ahh nice so you posted this on ClubITR like i recommended good stuff man! Them new brembos make the old brembos look like drum brakes sheesh!!

Thanks for the recommendation mate. Yep my Brembos now are a little overkill

[Norm]

The lovely thing about your blog is it highlights how Australia lacks the accessability to getting Honda aftermarket parts. From the last time I viewed your blog it seems like you had a nice collection of rare JDM parts.

[felixR]

Amazing build!!

Those brakes are impressive.

[eskimo_firefighter]

Amazing DC5R mate, I also remember reading your blog last year. Great quality parts that actually gets used on the track. Awesome!